Drought

  • High winds with gusts to 70 mph  ahead of the cold front that is moving into the Southeast caused forest fires in North Carolina and Tennessee to flare up, resulting in a panicked evacuation of Gatlinburg TN late in the evening on the 28th.  You can see pictures and video of the smoke and fire…

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  • Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, the Drought Monitor is out a day early.  It shows expansion of all levels of drought across the Southeast and the introduction of abnormally dry conditions along the Georgia coast and in northern Florida, where Matthew, Julia and Hermine dropped rain earlier this year.  Considering that most of those areas…

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  • While many parts of the Southeast are in very bad drought conditions, we are not the only place in the US that is being affected by drought.  The drought in the Northeast, fortunately, seems to be waning as they go into the winter wet season.  In northern California, El Niño rains last year put a…

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  • UPDATE: This webinar is ended.  You can see the slides or watch the video at https://aaes.auburn.edu/wrc/extension-outreach/drought/2016-2/.  The next webinar will be on Wednesday Dec. 7 at 1 pm EST. Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin Drought Assessment Webinar Today, Tuesday, November 22, 2016 – 1:00 pm Eastern Time Auburn University Water Resources Center and the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS)…

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  • Deke Arndt’s latest post in NOAA’s “Beyond the Data” blog has a great description of the Southeast drought that we are experiencing this year.  It does an excellent job of describing how the drought developed and discusses how drought monitoring is done when dryness occurs at different time scales.  You can read it here.

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  • With November 2/3 over, a significant part of the Southeast has had zero rain for the month.  When combined with the above normal temperatures in areas that did not get moisture from Hurricane Matthew, it’s no wonder the drought conditions have been expanding across the region.  This on top of the very dry conditions in…

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  • The Southeast Farm Press posted a story today about the negative impacts of the exceptional Southeast drought on the timber industry in Alabama (although the comments are generally true for the rest of the Southeast as well).  It points out that the drought and fires will have take a severe toll on forests this year…

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